Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Holder's Whoppers

Eric Holder's testimony today is literally unbelievable.

Let's begin with his claim that justice for the 9/11 victims has been delayed for eight years. First of all, as Holder pointed out, it has been delayed even longer for the victims of the USS Cole bombing and other terror attacks. What he studiously avoided mentioning was that he was deputy AG under Clinton at the time of the Cole and other attacks, because Eric Holder never even bothered with acts of terror committed on his watch. Second, whose law firm has defended eighteen Gitmo detainees, dragging their cases to a virtual standstill these supposedly infamous past eight years, doing everything legally possible to "delay justice" to the victims he is now claiming to champion? Why, Eric Holder's law firm, of course. And how did Eric Holder deal with the already-convicted FALN terrorists on his watch? Why, he had them pardoned, of course.

Andy McCarthy is busy today answering Holder's lies over at The Corner, including addressing the above point. Fer'instance:

6. In a civilian trial, America will see KSM for the coward that he is — Holder: "I am not scared of KSM." Submitting a war criminal to a military commission is not an exercise in fear; it is an exercise in justice. We already know all about what kind of animal KSM is, thanks to the exrtraordinary information that has come out in the military proceedings and the CIA interrogations. You could fill a book a book with it, which the 9/11 Commission did. We don't need to bear the risks of a civilian trial either to learn more about KSM or so Mr. Holder can show how brave he is.

Of course, Holder dismisses McCarthy as a "polemicist", which is apparently what leftists call prosecutors who, having experienced and dealt with the dangerous effects of prosecuting a terrorist in the civilian justice system, expose the left's disastrous idiocy. No doubt McCarthy will have more to say on Holder's lies and misdirections; here's a tidbit from a later Corner post:

If we are at war, and the Attorney General said this morning that we are, we have to treat it like a war. Pressed by Sen. Graham this morning, the AG could not name a single time when, during war, we captured an enemy combatant outside the U.S. and brought him into the United States for a civilian trial — vesting him with all the rights of an American citizen. That's because it hasn't happened. That's not how you treat wartime enemies.

Further, if we are going to have military commissions at all (and Holder says we will continue to have them), it makes no sense to transfer the worst war criminals to the civilian system. Doing so tells the enemy that they will get more rights if they mass-murder civilians.

Emphasis mine. An earlier gem, with more to come later from the never-ending Obamateur Hour:

In a meeting with the press in China, President Obama said that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed would be "convicted" and had "the death penalty applied to him" . . . and then said he wasn't "pre-judging" the case. He made the second statement after it was pointed out to him — by NBC's Chuck Todd — that the first statement would be taken as the president's interfering in the trial process. Obama said that wasn't his intention. I'm sure it wasn't — he's trying to contain the political damage caused by his decision — but that won't matter. He has given the defense its first motion that the executive branch, indeed the president himself, is tainting the jury pool. Nice work.